which the poor labourer and manufacturer are the least capable of conceiving. This sort of people know in general what they must suffer by war. It is a matter to which they are sufficiently competent, because it is a matter of feeling. The causes of a war are not matters of feeling, but of reason and foresight, and often of remote considerations, and of a very great combination of circumstances, which they are utterly incapable of comprehending; and, indeed, it is not every man in the higher classes who is altogether equal to it."
The wonderful prescience which the great anti-Jacobin thus arrogated to a select few among the higher classes turned out to be the direst of delusions.
It led, as we know, to an amount of distress and privation never before endured in England. It saddled the country with a debt of £600,000,000; and what in the eyes of a commercial community would have been a still greater calamity, it very nearly broke the Bank of England!
The Government had kept up the cry of "Wolf! wolf!" until at last the wolf did come, and in a most unexpected form. As long as an invasion was only a possibility, its mere dread sustained the flame of patriotism; but the instant it seemed likely to prove a reality, patriotism melted before self-interest, and there was a general rush to turn everything into gold. The country banks were resting on the Bank of England, and that institution had lent so much of its money to the Government that it was quite unequal to meet the demand for gold which now began to be made upon it. On Saturday, the 25th of February 1797, its stock of bullion had got so low that, to keep off the crowd, every demand was paid in sixpences. Some of the Directors were already with Pitt, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer. On Sunday the Cabinet met, and determined that the Bank must stop cash payments the next morning.
For a whole generation this condition of things lasted. It was not until four-and-twenty years after that the Bank was able to pay demands once more in gold. Guineas had almost disappeared, and crown pieces were only preserved in circulation by being raised to the value of five shillings and sixpence.
Cobbett had an inveterate hatred of the whole system of fund-
